Tag: world of warcraft

Gryffins: In Books and Video Games

Laura Highcove

So in putting together a post containing my gryffin collection I made a discovery. My gryffin collection is large, and so I decided to create a few different posts to show it off, rather than trying to stuff everything into one post. So this is the first post of three.

Gryffins in Books

I mentioned last week that one of the things that started me on my love of gryffins was the Mercedes Lackey series starting with The Black Gryphon. This was one of the first fantasy series I ever read. I don’t remember if I picked up this series because of the gryphons, or if it was just a happy accident.

I also mentioned the Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce, which doesn’t feature griffins in the entire series, but does have the main character Kel take care of a griffin kit for a while before it’s parents come to take it back. This series I read because I loved the Lioness Quartet and it just happened to have griffins in it.

I have also picked up a few series because they feature gryffins:

The Fallen Moon series I wasn’t super thrilled with. It started out good, but I think in trying make both the protagonist and antagonist human, the author ended up making neither all that likable and I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be rooting for by the end.

The Gryffin Mage series was a unique take on griffin mythology, where they were creatures of pure magic born out of fire (I think) and while they could think and speak, the author was successful in getting across their unique way of being.

And I have also run into them in other books quite by accident.

This gryffin pops up in the first volume of Magic Knight Rayearth (it’s a manga) where a wizard summons one for them to ride around on a bit.

And also in the book, the Copper Promise by Jen Williams where gryffins are featured as a plot point later in the book. (It’s not a spoiler.) No picture of this one because there’s no picture of a gryffin.

Gryffins in Video Games

Gryphons existed within the World of Warcraft MMORPG that was crazy popular many years ago. I was actually a hardcore raider for a number of years. Anyway, gryphons are used by the humans of the alliance for their flight paths. Ie, you would talk to a flight master and a gryphon would pop out and fly you to your destination. If members of the other faction try to kill the flight master, the second picture is what would happen.


In the expansions, gryphons became mounts you could buy and use to fly yourself around. I count this as part of my collection because I did “acquire” all of the different types of gryphon mounts you could have and technically they still exist on my account even if I don’t play anymore. The first picture are two versions of the slower gryphon mounts, and the second picture is the faster armored version.


If you’re interested in seeing the other versions, here’s a link. I don’t have the High Priest’s Lightsworn Seeker (Though now that I see it, I’m rather regretful. My main was a priest.) or the two grand mounts. Those all came out after I stopped playing.

So there’s all my gryffins for this installment. More coming soon.

Celebrating My Victories

Laura Highcove 2 Comments

This week, more on my new timesheets, because that is data and I love messing with data. I am really liking the effect the timesheet is having. It pushes me to do more work when I need to, but is also a way for me to sit down and say: “Okay, I’ve worked on my novel for two hours today, so no I don’t need to work on it more now.”

The other effect is that it lets me, definitively, see how long it takes me to do certain tasks. I find when writing new stuff, I tend to work better in half hour increments. When smoothing or revising, I can more easily work for up to an hour (or more).

It also lets me see what other things I did over the course of a week that I might forget I had done, like these past two weeks I went though my blog and re-jiggered the categories and tags. I now have:

Journal: Mostly talking about the writing I’ve been doing, but some of what’s going on in my life in general.
Blog posts: Which are posts that are meant to be more informational or topic focused than ‘what I’ve been doing’.
Reviews: Because I realized I really like doing reviews and talking about why I did or didn’t like particular media (tv shows, movies, books, and video games).
World of Warcraft: For all my old world of warcraft kill posts that I just can’t bring myself to delete.

It took some time, but it now means things are much neater, and that makes my heart happy.

Also, two great things happened this past week. First was that I reached the point in Huntsman where I *usually* bang my head against it, think nothing can be done, and become sad for several days. But this time I remembered my process after only one day, and went back to the beginning to smooth for a while. (I am also taking notes on the things I still need to do.) I am proud that I was actually able to look at my resistance and realize what it meant. It’s all part of getting comfortable with my process.

The second was that I got depressed (okay the depressed part wasn’t great) but I *realized* that I was depressed and gave myself the day off instead of beating myself up over the fact that I didn’t feel like working on the Huntsman. Instead I read more in my mushroom book (research for a potential story) and spent almost three hours writing the first drafts and taking pictures for the gryffin posts I have coming up. And those were both productive and fun.

So it was two wins in the “self-awareness” category and I am celebrating that fact. I didn’t try to force myself to feel the way I thought I should, I just listened to what I needed and worked from there and ended up more productive for it.

Added Feb 07: I totally forgot to make myself a writing goal. On Jan 21 my goal was to finish removing a character from the Huntsman and smooth to the end. Since then I got about halfway in, then went back to the beginning for another smoothing pass during which time I started taking notes on what I don’t like, or that needs to be fixed in each scene until I now reached the place where the book basically breaks down completely.

Plan for the next two weeks is now this: Finish off taking notes on the whole story (Wed), move the scenes around to try and make the story more whole (Thurs), write the new scenes I put in my notes as needing to write. (Sat/Sun).

Then the next week is another, heavy duty, smoothing pass. I’ll reevaluate where I am over the weekend and include my new plan in the next journal entry.

Warcraft Movie

Laura Highcove

So a few weeks ago I went to see the Warcraft movie. I knew it wasn’t going to be good and I knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending (cause the whole Alliance vs Horde thing), but I was hoping that I could get some entertainment value out of it.

Now at one point I was a pretty big Warcraft lore buff, but it’s been three or four years since I played World of Warcraft, and so most of it has faded. The only name I remembered was Medivh, and that he wasn’t a good guy.

As for the movie itself. The script was pretty terrible, however the characters did a good job of showing what good friends they were with each other. I don’t know if that was the script, or just good acting, but it made the movie bearable.

The graphics were, of course, amazing. Especially the orcs and how they moved and looked. I was also pretty impressed with the magic effects. I could see people saying that the magic was a bit overblown, but after playing World of Warcraft, it’s exactly what you see swirling around a mage or a warlock when they cast.

Seeing the cities of Ironforge and especially Stormwind was just amazing. I enjoyed seeing Karazhan and Dalaran as well, though they looked a little less like their in-game counterparts. Also, kudoes to the Alliance’s armor, showing off the shiny and the bling. Not realistic in the least, but who the heck cares?

And the movie did bring up nostalgic feelings of playing World of Warcraft, which I did from 2006 through 2012 in a hardcore raiding guild. I admit, I got goosebumps at the end when the crowd was chanting “For Azeroth!” and then shifted to the one “For the Alliance.”

Overall, movie was not great. I’d probably watch it again, but I have a feeling this is one of those movies where I’ll skip a lot of it. If you loved World of Warcraft, go check it out for old times sake. If not, you won’t miss a thing.

Left Behind

Laura Highcove

So I did something hard. I finally decided to quit raiding. It’s been four years, but raiding on Tuesdays was just killing me. When you get into a certain schedule and do it for four years, you get *used* to how things are. Before raiding ushered me out of my week, now it feels more like a roadblock as I come into a new week. Maybe it’s a weak excuse, but having everything crammed onto three days and then having my entire weekend just open really doesn’t work for me. I need ‘me’ time every day, time to work on my other hobbies and interests. I was spending quality time with my husband last night when I looked up at the clock and realized it was 7:30 and for a few moments all I thought was ‘I could get on. Look, it’s raid time and I’m just watching TV.’ but then I would be raiding, and unable to do anything else until 11 when it’s time to go to bed, at which time I would probably have to just leave raid because Koi’s been pushing past 11 *every* raid since we started in Cataclysm and I’m tired enough already without getting to bed late on top of it.

But whenever I think of raiding, I feel regretful because it’s a whole world that I’m feel like I’m losing. I have friends in the game and if I don’t raid, then we have no interaction. I could raid Wednesdays and Thursdays still, Wednesday might be pushing it, but then at least I could keep my schedule for Tuesdays. I went to Guild Ox this morning and realized that I wasn’t there for a single guild new kill, even when I was raiding because everything happened after I had to go to bed for the night or before we started raiding officially and I was doing other things, or after I stopped raiding. I’ve already been left behind and maybe it’s better to just stay that way.

But the time I would gain by no longer raiding, while hard to see right now. When you don’t have anything else to do, that’s when I could write, when I could play other video games that are piling up. It’s really a hard decision and I’m just not sure how things are going to go from here.

NaNo and beyond

Laura Highcove

Once again I have managed to be NaNotorious.

It was harder this year, for sure, since I had a full time job. Week three was the worst, I really wanted to just give up and get on with…well not doing this. But I managed to stick it out. Once again the book is not finished. I think I’m further through the book than the halfway of last year, but once again, we’ll see how that goes. I, of course, celebrated by starting work on my other book, The Trickster.

That being said, we’re less than a week away from Wow’s Cataclysm launch which will consume my soul for at least a month before I come up for air. Looking forward to the days off if nothing else. Though with the time, I really should get the ‘credits’ thing done to try and encourage other people to make their own so I can get that done before Cata launches.

There’s also the pesky issue of my lost SoulSilver game, and with it all of the Pokemon I have collected over the past, roughly three years. I have reached the last gym of the Diamond version of the game (which I hate as a game, but made better by sending over eggs from my husband’s Heart Gold game for a familiar team) and am playing with getting White when it comes out in March. However last night I looked over the pictures of the pokemon from Gen V and am sadly (but expectantly) disappointed by the horrible designs in most every respect. Most of my problem being that a lot of the pokemon don’t *look* like pokemon. The style seems incorrect. The starters are fine along with a few random pokes, but even the legendary dragons don’t really fit the style of pokemon designs I’m used to. I still desperately cling to the original 151 with some passion, with only tiny cracks for some pokemon from the later releases. By the time they hit Diamond’s pokemon, I was thoroughly disgusted, and think I hold no love for any of those pokemon (I’d have to check to be positive.)

So what is the point of going into Gen V? The possibility of at least good gameplay. I did not dislike Diamond only because of the unfamiliar, unimagined pokemon, but because the gameplay itself was terrible as they took a Game Boy game and spent five minutes making it DS compatible. (I also didn’t like it because of the storyline. While Team Galactic was cool for once again having a PLAN, the idea of being able to put the world’s creator in a ball in my pocket really pushes past even the suspension of disbelief one must have for being able to put something the size of Onix in a ball in my pocket.) SoulSilver was everything that I could possibly want in a game. All of the pokemon. A huge world. Fabulous gameplay and an actual (fabulous) use of the ds screen. In my mind they improved the game in almost every way. (Even the pokewalker was so cool.) So I’m hoping that Black and White will be worth it. If not, I suppose I’ll get another SoulSilver game at some point and complete my Gen IV collection and be happy with that.

Horse Clinic

Laura Highcove

So I’ve been calling all my horse posts ‘horsemanship’ for some odd reason even though I know it’s showmanship. Ah well, I will admit my mistake. Life goes on.

The past weekend we had a clinic at the barn. Two days of riding and showmanship. (Though I didn’t ride.) I learned a lot just by watching. Things to be tucked away until I do get to the point where I can use them. I hope that when Carol comes again in February, I’ll be enough of a rider to be worthy of her tutelage.

In showmanship I learned about backing up, which is rather hard all things considered. I also worked more on my turns and learned about moving when a judge inspects the horse.

I am also tapping in my ‘Near’ persona when working on showmanship. Thus I can set aside the part of me that kind of lounges along and lets the horse do whatever, and become a person who knows what she expects, and expects it out of the horse as well. I don’t have it exactly. I felt rather guilty after one session when I most fell into this persona.

Near is a character that developed from my WoW character. When I leveled her, I already had the plans laid out for her to be my main. When she reached 70 (max at the time) she had gear, rep, and a epic mount waiting for her. So she’s rather spoiled. Though she worked hard to get where she is, she’s not one to act modest. She knows what she wants and she takes it. She’s actually an evil character. The first I’ve created that was not meant to be a villain. But she is Lawful Evil. She makes her own set of rules and she follows them. And because of her collection of mounts in WoW, she, the character, is very knowledgeable about them. Though she does not treat them as companions, but as the mounts they are. Thus why she’s a good persona for when I need to be firm handed with horses.

Aion Beta II

Laura Highcove

From the future (ie 2018) the image links on this post no longer work. I must have deleted them in a cleaning since it’s an old post and it’s not worth it to me to try and find them again. Sorry.

Okay, so more Aion beta action time. Got some advice from Sil wherein I now know how to auto run. Man that feels better, but I’m not surprised I missed the keybind. It was called like “Automatic Forwarding” or something equally long and ambiguous. I got confused by the keybinding that was called “Run”. Silly me.

Secondly, for mana regen we were told of “resting” wherein you sit and regain health and mana kinda like drinking in WoW only without food and MUCH more slow. Way too much downtime to be worthwhile, since the amount regenned seems to be set instead of a percentage.

Mages ARE given two abilities to get back some mana. One gives like 200 mana on a minute cooldown. The other gives just under 200 mana on a 12 sec cooldown but it takes reagents. Sounds good right? Not when I have 2.5k mana. I’m really hoping we get something better, but looking at Mana Ability II that we get at level 22, it actually gives us LESS mana. I don’t know how that’s possible. I’m hoping it’s a beta mistake.

Sill huge problems with the spirits not being able to fly. Every time I wanted to fly over a few mobs (Not to mention flying up to the actual quest hub.) in the new quest area that allows flying, I had to resummon my spirit. (Don’t get me started on the fact that this new hub has no flight path.)

Also HUGE problem with a campaign quest line that threw me into an area where I got two shot. Only after running back did I find out that one needs a group (quest doesn’t say it) to complete it. I (On my spiritmaster) went in with a cleric and two rangers. We died a half dozen times while kiting each mob for at least a minute to kill it. We got the first campaign quest done; only to find out the second part was killing a named that was wandering around who two shot one of the hunters. We had to give up on it for lack of a tank. (btw, these mobs that were chewing us up and spitting us out were Mau. I repeat my previous comment about them being op.) It rubs me the wrong way that REQUIRED quests REQUIRE a full, balanced, 6-person party to complete.

I also spent much of this beta getting my templar to level 16. I am pretty irate about the fact that there are nowhere near enough quests to level. I actually had to grind three-quarters of level 16 because there just were no more quests. That makes me feel that the zones were just poorly planned. I feel like I saw more gray quest arrows than colored each time I moved to the next quest hub.

Despite that, I loved my templar. It was a little slow killing mobs, but I had absolutely no downtime, and it got even better at level 16 with more damage dealing abilities.

So I wanted to try out the dyes in this beta for fun. So here is the original, a cool looking green outfit on my templar. When I looked at it, I guessed that the part that would be recolored would be the green. Makes sense right? Apparently not. Some idiot decided that the silvered plate should be recolored instead of the actual colored part of the armor. /slaps forehead So I dyed each piece different in protest.

Lastly was my complaint from two weeks ago about the inventory space. So I decided to take screenshots of what my inventory space looks like just to prove a point. Everything you see in the warehouse is a crafting material that you either gather or get as a drop (sans the patterns which, as you can see, I can’t learn yet.)

My inventory space is currently cleared of any gatherables. Right now is just potions, a few pieces of gear and quest items. I started just not picking up manastones I don’t use, but in live, that would be throwing away a lot of money, so it’s not really an option. So add about 8-9 manastones and 7-8 gatherables that will be in my bags while I’m questing and really… just not a lot of space. And looking at the price for upgrade, that’s for the warehouse, upgrading my actual bag is 61k, still a lot.

I’m hoping that when we go to live, I’ll be able to make more money such that I can more quickly update my space, but again it seems like poor planning to rely on a non-set monetary source in order to have enough space to actually play the game.

Also, I got my DP to 4,000 in order to morph some aether powder, and took a picture of the shine around me.

And yet despite all these problems, I still plan on playing it when it comes out, just not dropping WoW for it.

Fun stuff

Laura Highcove

So I hit 80 in wow the Wednesday after it came out. Since then we’ve cleared 25-man Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum (all drakes down) and have worked a little bitty bit on Malygos. I’m working on my gear and rep, but I also found out about a really rare spawn that I’ve been camping since I hit 80 to no avail.

NaNoWriMo was a flop, the lure of WoW was just too great. Had the expansion come out in any other month I would’ve been fine. So my goal now is to finish off Shifting Winds (Only another few chapters) and then start posting Silent Wings and finishing that off. As such I will have another chapter of Shifting Winds up tomorrow and I’ll go from there.

Nano Update! …and LK too.

Laura Highcove

Well technically you can see my current word count by clicking on the little button I put up, but for those of you too lazy to do so: 15,802. I’m a bit behind, but I have been since day two or three. I just kind of keep following the goal by a few thousand words each day. Whatever works I guess.

So yesterday was patch Tuesday for WoW. Servers went down around 8, came back up around 2 as planned, and went down again almost immediatly. They didn’t come back up last night. Apparently there was a problem where everyone’s mail and auctions just disappeared, but this morning they say they’re working on a problem where people were buying arena items without paying the correct amounts for them, which is why it’s still not up. Pretty horrible way to lead into the day before the newest expansion. Won’t do people much good to go to the midnight release tonight if the servers are still down.

That being said, I am still very excited about the expansion, and I know they’ll fix it eventually. Leveling up for BC was one of the more fun times I’ve had in WoW, just because everyone on the server was leveling up at the same time. Pugs were successful because the good players who usually hide away in their guilds were out there looking for groups, and everyone was helping everyone else with quests because everyone needed to do the same quests at about the same times.

At the same time, I am feeling that my decision to switch my main was a good one at this point. I got extremely lucky that the pet that I went back and leveled ended up being the best raid pet, but now that that’s changed I see less alure in the hunter class. I mean there are always going to be cookie cutter specs. There will always be talents that are just necessary to do the most damage, but those are built into the hunter. For me, changing my pet is changing that character. I know, RP crap, but that’s how it is. The fact that I would have to go out there and get a devilsaur (which I hate) or a spirit cat (which are cool) like *everyone* else, no options…yeah it’s just a bit much. Same reason I’ve hated cats even though there is such a variety of skins. Either way, I’m probably being whiny, but I’m allowed. It is a game, and I’m in it to have fun.

Now I’ll still be leveling and gearing Nabith. I think I did a good job of gearing Near outside of raids, so I can do that with Nabith as well. I also think I want to gear Pandemonium. While tanks won’t be in as short supply (hopefully…) just having an aoe tank has come in handy a lot, and so I want to have the option when I need it. Amebil will continue to just exist as an alchemist/skinner, and same with Isrio. Neither will get fabulous gear, but I still have all my bases covered.

Hopefully the servers come up sometime today so I can get everything set for tomorrow, including filling my bank to give me more bag space, and positioning myself in Menathil (still can’t spell it) Harbor for transfer to Borean Tundra as soon as I have LK installed.

WOW attention

Laura Highcove

Patch 3.0 just hit in wow, the patch that gives us everything for the expansion except what you need the expansion to access. As such, it has garnered my attentions quite thoroughly. And of course in four weeks the actual expansion hits. and that will have almost complete control over my time. As such, the updates are probably going to be few and far in between, though I hate to do it because Shifting Winds is so close to being done, I’d also rather not have what few people visit this site continually disappointed. Thanks for your understanding.